


Cotton Candy Vodka and Good Vibes

by Imdying



Category: Video Blogging RPF, youtube- fandom
Genre: Confessions, F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Who's to Say, adam is the soft jock of your dreams, couldn't find a way to work in an ari cameo sorry, does cotton candy have any kind of thematic significance?, lots of little baby cameos from other animators, theyre so soft ok, this is jaiden's frat-sona so don't judge her ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-01-29 23:50:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21418741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imdying/pseuds/Imdying
Summary: Frat Party AU where they're all kind of bro-y and awful. Lots of fluff and college shenanigans.
Relationships: (IMPLIED), Jaiden Animations/James Rallison
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I literally can't believe that barely anyone has posted fics for this ship on ao3 yet. I'm simply doing my service for this country. *salutes*

Jaiden blinks lazily up at the smooth, vaulted ceiling of the frat house; her arms sprawled across the back of the ancient house sofa. She reaches out a hand to grasp futilely at the tan expanse, mind briefly full of thoughts of stars and clouds that disappear just as quickly as they appeared.

The old crusty sofa she’s currently melded into had probably seen more atrocities than any mortal man could live through to tell the tale, but she can’t quite bring herself to care at the moment. Jaiden wasn't usually the type to indulge in anything her peers were usually trashed on, but tonight she decided to loosen the grip on her usually tightly reigned in sensibilities. Finals week had just finished, so why the fuck not, she had thought.

A pleasant, smoky haze had settled over Jaiden’s head and the edges of her vision clouded and shifted, blurring the crowd of plastered partygoers. She brings one her hands to scrub at her eye, accidentally smudging the eyeliner that she had carefully applied for the party. Jaiden lets out a drunk giggle at her mistake, one that she would definitely have had the good grace to be a least a little self-conscious about if she were sober. She dimly notes that the tacky, e-boy party lights lining the tops of the walls were set to a neon green, filling her mouth, weirdly enough, with the sour taste of granny smith apples.

_Ugh, granny smith apples. Literally everyone knows Pacific Rose was where it was_ really_ at. At least_, Jaiden muses, _it wasn’t Brayburn. Now that was a real atrocity. _She snorts loudly at her own musings

A jarring shout startles Jaiden out of her drunken revelry. Groggily lifting her head to search for the source of the noise, she finds Adam vibing out on the makeshift dance floor, looking even more scruffy and lovably goofy than usual. She lets out a lackluster whoop to show some support for her homie, and Adam sloppily points at her from across the living room.

“Jaiden!!!” he howls in his rough baritone, after making his way across the room. He stumbles on his last step and tumbles onto the couch next to her, tipsily writhing around to face her. Adam tries to mirror Jaiden’s casual stance, propping up one of his arms to rest his head on, not quite nailing the cool nonchalance he was going for. She reaches out to pull at the side of Adam’s red, Gucci bro-tank.

“_Wow_, you really brought out the big guns this time, this is your favorite shirt,” Jaiden gasps in mock surprise. “Who are you trying to impress tonight?”

Adam bats her clamoring hands away with exaggerated annoyance. “Well, you never know what babes will show up to these kinds of things, bro.” he shrugs, tone all ironic bravado that Adam always did when he was trying to get Jaiden to laugh.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jaiden rolls her eyes, finally pulling herself off the couch, a new drunken desire to explore the expanses of the house suddenly overcoming her.

“There’s cotton candy vodka in the kitchen cupboard!” Adam hollers over the deafening base of the Post Malone song being blasted at her retreating back, as he gets pulled back into the crowd of dancing college students by some of his fraternity brothers.

“And for god’s sake, Jaiden, you better bust out those sick dance moves of yours before the end of the night! Or else!!!”

Despite herself, she can’t help the goofy smile that fights its way across her face.

Jaiden floats aimlessly through the rooms and hallways of the first floor of the frat house, with all the eager curiosity of safari explorer trekking through a pristine habitat brimming with fascinating, exotic wildlife. She sees Maaz from her statistics course attached by the lips to a girl she vaguely recognizes from her dorm floor, both of them crammed onto an old recliner that makes Jaiden wonder if it’s constitutionally sturdy enough for the job the couple is demanding of it. Her other friends Ilyssa and Dominic are heatedly engaged in a tango routine that is way too passionate for the Lady Gaga song that is currently blasting out from the shitty speakers perched on the TV stand. Jaiden takes a moment to solemnly reflect, hand over her heart, on all the bangers that Lady Gaga had blessed them with over the years and to quietly give thanks for the good vibes.

Jaiden thinks, for a moment, that she wishes she could feel this light and at ease on a normal day. Her anxiety was something that she was working at on a daily basis, and she was proud of the progress that she had made, but sometimes it all just came rushing back to her and overwhelmed her again. The brunette takes a deep breath to collect herself and wills away the sudden tears threatening to well up and spill over. Instead, Jaiden elects to lose herself in the funky baseline of whatever bop the curly-haired fuckboy on the aux cord was bumping.

She feels her own heartbeat fall in line with the tempo (although that might just be the effects of the cross-fade hitting), and gets into it.

She couldn’t give less of a fuck that she was quite literally “dancing on her own”; the only things that exist in the world right now are Jaiden and the music. Everyone else be damned.

Somewhere from deep in the house, as if he was summoned, she hears the distant sound of Adam's wolf-whistle and him yelling something about funky moves. 

A whirlwind of skirts and laughter abruptly crosses into Jaiden’s path. Rebecca is suddenly standing in front of her, pressing a lukewarm red solo cup into one hand and grabbing the other to drag her upstairs.

“Well, hello to you too,” Jaiden laughs breathlessly, channeling a slightly embarrassing amount of focus on _not_ tripping over her converse as they ascended the steps. The other girl doesn’t deign to throw her back a response, but Jaiden is content at the moment to just bask in the warm, inviting energy that Rebecca radiates everywhere she goes. She sips idly from her cup, hissing slightly at the burn from the mystery liquid as it makes its way down her throat. Rebecca chuckles lightly at that, no doubt unused to the sight of a trashed Jaiden in the first place, with her messy makeup and wide, unabashed grin. 

Jaiden shrugs internally at the thought. She wasn’t really in the mood to justify her slightly unusual behavior anymore than she had to. Everyone had to let loose every once in a while, she reasoned. She's pretty sure that it was science actually. Or something. 

The pair burst into a bedroom currently occupied by a circle of students chatting amicably, some lounging on the floor, others neatly situated on the small couch, all with a drink in their hands. The group cheers and raise their cups as Rebecca enters the room, with Jaiden in tow.

“Alright,” Rebecca exclaims happily, in her smooth, commanding voice, “Now we can get back to the game!” This elicits another handful of tipsy yells from the red-faced party-goers. Jaiden thinks she recognizes some of them, although she has to admit the three Natty Lights she slammed half an hour ago during a round of beer pong were really starting to catch up to her. She hiccups uselessly.

Jaiden drops unceremoniously to sit cross legged on the soft, carpeted bedroom floor, her lanky limbs fluttering around as she tries to get comfortable. Once she’s settled, she filters out the chatter of the circle, smiling absently along to the occasional laughter that would bubble up. After a while, she distractedly gathers that the game being played was Never Have I Ever. Jaiden is content to sit back for the time being and allow her usual wallflower tendencies to take over, taking in pieces of anecdotes and the salacious whispers.

As the game roars on around her, Jaiden finds herself staring unseeingly at the figure of her neighbor, perched next to her on the floor. She feels her eyebrows scrunch together as she tries to discern what exactly it is she’s looking at. Something about the fuzzy features was undeniably familiar to her.

Slowly, the picture came into focus; first the mop of blond hair, then the ugly supreme snapback, and finally the classic striped long sleeve. “James!” she gasps happily, feeling an enjoyable warmth and familiarity flood over her as she finally recognizes the barely concealed amusement on her friend’s face.

James snickers back at her, and in the distant, suppressed rational part of her brain, Jaiden laments how tragically drunk she is and how painfully sober James seems to be.

“What’s going on, Jai-den~” he drawls out playfully, dragging her name out at the end. He reaches out to ruffle the thick cloud of her hair, already fairly tussled from the excitement of the night so far.

“When did you even get here, man? Why didn’t you find me earlier?" Jaiden demands, clumsily smacking the bill of James’s snapback in intoxicated retribution, "Geez, and here I was thinking we were friends,” Her lisp comes out a little harsher than normal as her tongue struggles to slur around the words. 

James laughs helplessly and holds up his hands in surrender, brown eyes sparkling. “Relax, I didn’t even know if you were coming! Last I heard from you, you were all busy moping over the B- you got on your final Psychology paper! _You_ were supposed to text _me_, remember?” he huffs fondly, jokingly punching her in the shoulder.

Jaiden feels heat rise up to her cheeks, and she splutters, thoroughly chagrined. She mumbles some vague half-hearted apology, but James just waves her off, good-natured as always, and turns his attention back to the game. The good company of friends, the liveliness of the game, and the languid buzz of the alcohol starts to settle over Jaiden like a warm, beloved blanket. At some point, James takes off his godawful hat and plops it on her wild mane of hair, smiling crookedly at her. The challenge in the action is not lost on Jaiden. But she just feels so slow and clumsy and hot all over, she can't find any fight left in her, so she accepts her horrible fashion fate.

_James is such a good friend,_ Jaiden thinks happily, _always looking out for me._ She leans back against the cool surface of the wall, head drifting down slowly to rest on James’s sturdy shoulder. She feels James's chest rumble as he chuckles at Tim from Sigma Chi finishing up recounting a story from when he was growing up; something about grandmas and cacti.

“Hey, James?” she finally pipes up, quietly, eyes still closed.

“Yeah, Jaiden?” he responds, voice soft in a way that Jaiden had never heard it before.

“Do you wanna play Mario Maker tomorrow?” she mumbles sleepily into his shoulder.

There was a brief, but poignant pause.

“Of course, Jaiden.” he replies, voice cracking ever so slightly on the last syllable

Jaiden sighs contentedly. For just a second, she swears she can feel a hand card though her hair, so quickly she’s half-convinced she must have imagined it. As she fell deeper and deeper into the pleasant glow of sleep, the last thought Jaiden remembers having is about what a great party this was, and also that she hopes Adam doesn’t break his wrist doing a keg stand again.

* * *

Rebecca catches James’s gaze from her place on the bed. Her eyes roam over his blushing cheeks and Jaiden’s sleeping form delicately resting on his shoulder, and she shakes her head at him exasperatedly. That boy was absolutely hopeless. She suppresses a sigh and takes a swig of her soda.

_Oh well,_ she muses, primly running her hand over the folds of her dress, _better luck next time_.


	2. James's POV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's here, he's blond and he's got the big dumb. Remember: Frat boys aren't known for their amazing emotional depths. Life pro tip. Alright, now proceed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hell yeah we're back. If you're reading this, you're a true intellectual and thank you for your service once again.

James stares down his reflection in the streaky, dimly-lit bathroom mirror. He pulls a comically wide, boxy smile, checking his teeth for any remnants of the Chicken Pad Thai he and Adam had destroyed earlier in between Super Smash sessions.

Satisfied with what he sees, he takes a step back to strike a few more poses. James is actually pretty proud of the outfit he’d picked out for tonight; just a striped blue long-sleeve, black jeans, and his backwards cap. It’s nothing fancy to be sure, but it flatters his long limbs, ruffling his dirty blond hair in a cute, boyish way.

Or at least that’s what he thinks. James could just be making shit up, of course. It was a well-known fact that James didn’t really fuck with fashion like that, and most days you could find him roaming the streets in whatever plain t-shirt he found on the 5$ sale rack at Old Navy—a fact that he was damn proud of.

“Looking very dashing tonight there, Jamison,” a deep, familiar voice rings out as Adam comes up behind his friend, jokingly hanging off James’s arms that had been raised up in a bodybuilder’s pose when Adam interrupted his bathroom hype session.

“Right back at you, buddy,” James grinned back at the shorter man, “Do you need any more help getting set up? I told Maaz to just throw the extra chairs in the study room—oh, and I picked up that cotton candy-flavored vodka from Keg N Bottle, why did you even want that anyway? And Adam, if you even _look_ at the keg, I am not kidding---”

“Oh my _God_, dude you need to relax!” Adam cackles, cutting off the rambling blond. “Tonight is for fun, and fun _only_, you got that?”

James sighs. “I know man, you know it’s just…” he trails off, unable to bring himself to finish the thought.

Adam lifts up his hands to gravely grip the sides of James’s face, earnestly gazing into his eyes. “Yeah, I do know,” Adam levels him with a pointed look, “and on GOD, we’re going to get you laid tonight, bro.”

James is suddenly choking on his own spit, roughly pushing Adam’s hands off and past him out of the bathroom, trying his absolute best to tune out Adam’s howls of laughter still echoing off the tiled walls.

The hallway spits him out into the living room, where he finds the first wave of people filing in from the sprawling green lawn, streaming through the open front door with laughter and lively conversation. James thinks he recognizes the fit, curly-haired upperclassmen donning a stylish letterman jacket that’s waving at him from the beer pong set up near the pool. ‘_Anthony Patrick or something._’

James hesitates for a moment, scanning across the sea of party people for a familiar head of dark hair but coming up empty. Finally shrugging, he sends Anthony a grateful smile of recognition, jogging over to greet him and the small group of players getting ready to start the first round of the game. ‘_If she comes, she comes,_’ he concedes, ‘_If not, then there’s no way in hell that I’m not still going to get_ mythically _hammered tonight_.’

James takes a deep breath across from the row of red cups, carefully lining up the shot. The ping pong ball sinks into the middle cup with a satisfying clink, and James allows the rush of cheers from his fellow team mates to wash over him.

* * *

The room is spinning. Ok, wait. That’s just Rebecca spinning James, around and around by the hand, barely suppressing her glee at the nausea on his pale face. Heeding his cries of mercy, his friend relinquishes her hold on him and allows him to lean down to rest his head on her shoulder.

After his brain stops shaking, James takes a moment to collect himself. The party is in full swing by now; and although the pink-purple hue of the lights and the sticky-sweet happiness radiating off the crowd are taking the edge off of the stress that had built up over finals week, James can’t help but feel like his heart was somewhere else. Next to him, Rebecca is glancing at him with a little look of something that he can’t quite identify.

“Whatcha thinking about right now, James? You got a real serious look on your face right now. This party not crazy enough for you?” Rebecca hedges, voice artificially light.

Now, _this_ is what James hates. _Feelings_. James considers himself a relatively easy-going person; sure, he’s a little awkward at times but he’s got a healthy sense of adventure that people are drawn to and he’s learned to roll with the punches. But having to hear all of his friends awkwardly tip-toe around the obvious, and what they really want to say makes him want to crawl out of his skin. Because they _know_. There’s no way they don’t know, at this point. The look in Rebecca’s soft brown eyes is all but screaming “BUSTED”.

James grins sheepishly back at her.

“Ah, it’s nothing, don’t even worry about it, Becca. Just not really feeling it tonight. Must just be stressed about the Math 4B scores, Maaz said all the TA’s were talking about how everyone got their asses kicked by that proofs section,” he winces even as the words leave his mouth. James didn’t have the reputation as the most studious pupil, much more likely to be found fucking around with Adam making those “dumb” (as Jaiden called them) Tik Tok’s than pouring over his overpriced textbooks.

The image of James not getting down on the dance floor—he was, weirdly enough, very well know for his catwalk skills-- and instead agonizing over his math finals would be suspicious as hell to anyone who knew him well enough.

“Listen—” Rebecca begins, to which James groans loudly trying to drown her out. Rebecca clamps her hand down over the lanky man’s mouth to quiet him.

“Listen,” she continues, “I know it’s not really any of my business, but I really think you should just _talk_ to her, James. That’s the only way anything’s gonna get done anyway, you know how dense Jaiden can be.”

James tries, and fails, to fight off the uncomfortable red flush that always crept up when someone tried to force this conversation on him. He sighs.

“I know that you’re right, Rebecca-- really-- I do. And thank you for trying to look out for me. But my friendship with Jaiden just means too much to me to do anything that could put it in any serious danger. I’d rather have her as a friend than nothing at all.”

Rebecca is pressing her lips into a thin line.

“Ok,” she concedes, “Alright. I totally get that.” She looks him in the eye, “You’re a good guy, James, you know that?”

He shrugs bashfully and says nothing.

“Well, this is a party after all, and there’s no use sitting around pining after great loves that can never be,” she declares melodramatically, beckoning him to follow her upstairs. “I’m going to round up some folks and we’ll play a relaxing drinking game, how does that sound?” she finishes sweetly, obviously not expecting any kind of reply.

James trails after her, wondering, not for the first time, how he landed himself with such a cast of _eccentric _characters for friends.

Adam, so far gone already, calls after him, “Get it James!”, and promptly vomits onto Maaz’s shoes. 

* * *

James is sitting on the floor, chugging a Mike’s Hard Lemonade when Rebecca walks into the bedroom armed with Jaiden, and he is not strong enough to prevent the inevitable choke that results. _Goddamn you, Rebecca Parham, you wily minx. _

James attempts to casually dab at the spilled lemonade around his collar, watching Jaiden collapse on the carpet out of the corner of his eye. Fortunately, (or unfortunately?), his friend seems pretty out of it, currently preoccupied with studying the back of her hand with a quiet, furious intensity.

He’s having a hard time focusing on the game, and what the people are saying, and basically everything that isn’t the silent warmth radiating off of Jaiden beside him. He feels eyes on him and he tries not to smile.

Finally, James hears Jaiden gasp his name in realization and he turns to take her in. Her unruly black hair and her smudged black eye make-up make his heart flutter stupidly in chest, and he curses his own weakness.

He does his best to tune back into the game, occasionally exchanging soft chatter with his tipsy best friend, her inebriated state making her mushy and open in a way that makes James’s heart constrict uncomfortably. Eventually, he feels Jaiden’s head delicately fall onto his shoulder, and James has to take a moment to decide whether to thank or curse every deity in the universe. He prays to anyone who’s listening that no one is watching them right now, because James is sure that his emotions are scrawled on his face so plainly that it’s visible from the stratosphere.

He and Jaiden are at a point in their friendship where casual affection like shoulder brushes and head resting are commonplace, a casual way to show the trust and companionship that they’d been steadily building over the past 3 years. But ever since that godforsaken day that James had sat up in his bed, the realization of his newly formed crush striking him like a lightning bolt, every little touch had been poisoned by James’s guilt over his harbored feelings.

“Hey, James?” Jaiden’s rough voice-- that he has no right finding as attractive as he does-- pipes up.

And James lets his hopes, foolishly, climb into his throat before he can stop them. For a moment, he can’t even seem to breathe.

“Do you want to play Mario Maker tomorrow?”

James feels all the air rush out of him at once, a confusing cocktail of disappointment and relief bubbling up inside him. _'This wasn’t the right time anyway,_' he reflects, faintly, '_if such a time even existed at all.'_

“Of course, Jaiden,” James smiles despite himself, the fondness settling sweetly around him like cotton candy. Internally, he laments how cheesy Jaiden makes him.

Leaning back his head to rest against the cool wall, James resolves to take Adam’s advice after all and really try to relax. He gently places an arm around Jaiden’s shoulder and drops his head to rest on hers, careful not to wake her. He can’t resist quickly running a hand through her dark hair. Anyone had to admit that Jaiden had great hair, and James was willing to fight to the death against anyone who dared to say otherwise.

The blond ignores Rebecca’s burning gaze he feels from across the room. And James thinks to himself that he’s just happy to cherish these moments he’s able to share with Jaiden, platonic or otherwise.

He exhales, and then smiles. _Maybe one day._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to make this 3 chapters because I /gotta/ make a chapter where they actually talk about they gotdamn feelings. Deep down, I think it's what Jaiden would want. Hope you enjoyed this chapter! If you left a kudos or comment, that would be awesome and also remind me that I'm not the only consciousnesses floating out here in the void.


	3. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know that feeling when you're standing on the edge of a cliff, and that little voice in your brain says, "do it pussy, jump, you won't"? Yeah...

It happens the way these things always tend to; out of absolutely fucking nowhere.

It’s the morning after the party, and they’re hanging out in James’s room; Jaiden hanging upside down off the foot of the bed playing through _Hollow Knight_ on the switch, James sitting criss-crossed on the floor scrolling through his twitter feed liking Dril tweets. Amazingly, Jaiden seemed to have waken up largely free of any serious hangover symptoms. While James hadn’t drank anywhere near enough to get drunk anyway, he still had to bite back a bit of jealousy at his friend’s iron-clad tolerance. 

There’s mid-morning sunlight streaming through the open window, framing Jaiden’s lounging silhouette, her hair falling past her ears towards the floor in a way that made James’s head hurt.

In retrospect, if he had to guess why, James would probably say it was because he had just gotten so used to pushing and _pushing_ his feelings down. After so much time and effort, inevitably, your resolve gets weaker and the goal gets hazier. Eventually, you simply wake up one day and forget what the point of it all was.

“_Jaiden-there’s-something-I-need-to-tell-you,” _James’s mouth is open and spilling out the words before he even has time to think. He smacks a hand against his forehead in anguish at his own dumbassery.

Jaiden looks up from her game and blinks at him. James could easily imagine, if they themselves were in a video game, the_ ? _text that would pop up over her head.

Jaiden rolls over onto her stomach to look at him properly. James is practically seizing up in panic, but he tries his best to keep it cool. ‘_Oh my god, oh my god, it’s happening what do I do OH MY GOD---'_

“Uh, yeah, what’s up James?” she asks, poorly masked curiosity creeping through. She’s got her best ‘You can tell me anything, I’m listening’ expression on, eyes unguarded and eyebrows drawn up sympathetically.

James tries to open his mouth to speak and nothing comes out. His throat feels like its closing and he’s fighting to keep his breathing steady.

“I…” His head swims with thoughts, and he tries to grab a single one to try and string into actual words, but he comes up empty.

Jaiden sits up and scoots to the edge of the bed. She reaches out to grasp one of James’s ever-so-slightly sweaty palms.

“James,” she says, tone kind and gentle, so different from her usual dry and sarcastic drawl. Jaiden has always been good at knowing when to drop the jokes and when shit needed to get serious. It was one of the many things James admired about her.

“You’re my best friend, man. I thought you knew that we could tell each other anything, at this point,” she tries for levity, carefully toeing the line between sincere and playful.

James looks at her, really _looks _at her for a moment. She’s smiling, just a little bit, patient and earnest.

He sighs, and bites the bullet.

“I really like you, Jaiden. And I have for a while now.” Once he starts, its difficult to stop. “And I know you probably don’t feel the same way, I know we’re best friends, and I don’t want to do anything to get in the way of that and---”

Jaiden puts a hand on his forearm to stop his nervous stream of rambling.

She’s surprised, James can tell. Maybe even shocked. She is looking slightly off to the side, not quite meeting his eyes, and he can see the gears in her head working. James’s heart leaps into his throat, and he’s honestly surprised that he could get more nervous than he already was.

“James I… I had no idea. I guess you hid it really well,” She laughs nervously, and James has to bite back any number of wry remarks (A '_Literally any of our friends would beg to disagree' _dying on his tongue), “Um, how long have you known?”

Jaiden is working through her emotions, plainly flickering across her face, and James takes the opportunity to take the spotlight off of her for a second.

“A couple months, maybe? I’m sorry. For not telling you sooner. I guess I just thought that I could get over it soon enough. And like I said, I really don’t want to do anything to jeopardize our friendship. You’re really important to me, Jaiden.” He takes a breath.

When it becomes clear that she’s not ready to say anything yet, James decides to press on.

“But I just started noticing things about you. Like the way you get so excited when you’re talking about Pokémon. Or how you love to buy weird shit, like fucking plastic dinosaurs and novelty signs, to put on your desk whenever we go to Target. And... other stuff too I guess,” James murmurs, blushing. He doesn't think he can bring himself to tell her that he thought her laugh was actually the cutest sound in the entire world, or that the way she looked with her hair tied up had him wanting to drop to his damn knees on a daily basis.

Jaiden finally turns and looks at him. “Well, this is a lot to take in. I don’t know, I think I’ve just never really _thought _to think about you that way. I mean, I’ve always thought you were cute or whatever,” James can’t help the way his eyebrows shoot up, “even though you have the worst fashion sense I’ve seen on a human so far.”

James huffs good-naturedly. Being able to still joke around is a good sign, he supposes. But he can’t really hold back the sinking feeling that’s settling into his stomach at Jaiden’s words. He holds his breath, shutting his eyes, and waits for her to deal the final blow.

“But James,” he feels her grip on his hand tighten, “I think… I think I like you too.”

His eyes fly open and he moves to take in the giddy grin breaking out across the dark-haired girl’s face. His brain is completely empty, filled only with a crackling white, static feeling.

“Jaiden,” he chuckles weakly, “don’t fuck with me dude, I don’t think I could handle it.”

Jaiden lifts her hand to do the Scout’s Promise with mock seriousness, “Absolutely no cap detected here, chief.”

Finally, delighted laughter erupts from James’s chest and he lunges forward to throw his arms around Jaiden. He can feel Jaiden shaking with laughter too, and his heart feels so full that it threatens to break apart.

He lingers in the warm embrace, and it’s with great reluctance that he eventually pulls away.

“Also, I don’t know if you should keep calling call me dude if we start dating,” Jaiden teases.

“Ok, well hang on a second, I don’t think we need to go about changing _everything _about us that makes us cool,” they both dissolve into more giggles.

“But,” James interjects shyly, “you do want to date, though? Like, with me? Boyfriend and girlfriend and all that,” he trails off, dumbly.

Jaiden smiles indulgently at him and brings a hand to cup the side of his flushed face.

“Yeah, I do, James. Want to date with you and stuff,” she says, over exaggeratedly fluttering her eyelashes and making kissy faces at him. James guesses that he’s just going to have get used to constantly being embarrassed dating Jaiden.

They lapse into a comfortable silence, and their current proximity and intimacy slowly dawns on James.

The air between them subtly shifts, and Jaiden absentmindedly swipes the thumb resting on his face across James’s cheek, leaving a trail of fire across the skin. James can feel his eyes start to drift shut, and his pulse is thumping, everywhere, stronger than he thinks it ever has.

James doesn’t know if it’s him or Jaiden that leans in first, but when they softly collide, his entire universe whites out; reduced down only to the points where he and Jaiden are connected. Their lips, Jaiden’s hand on his face, his hand that comes up to cup the back of her neck.

James knows it’s cliché to say anything about sparks or fireworks, but _fuck _if he wasn’t feeling anything explosive right now. With their mouths gently slotting together, the only things James can see across the backs of his closed eyelids are bursts of pink and purple, dancing through his head as delirious pleasure numbs everything else around them.

The sound of the door flinging open sends the two of them flying apart from each other, Jaiden falling backwards towards the bed and James, unfortunately, tumbling onto the floor.

Adam stands in the doorway, hand clutching the brass knob for one tense moment, before breaking out into fit of high-pitched screeching that James is almost impressed that his deep-voiced friend can manage.

He dashes across the bedroom to tackle the both of them in a massive hug, dragging Jaiden to the floor in the process. The three of them of them collapse into a pile of breathless glee on the carpet, James and Jaiden’s exasperated complaining fighting for volume over Adam’s ecstatic stream of congratulations.

Adam launches into a tirade about how they should totally order a pizza and get super high to celebrate, and about how he’s absolutely texting everyone about this _right now_, and that speaking of which, Maaz owes him 20$, the dumb bitch. James catches Jaiden’s eye over the Adam's enthusiastic chatter, and the beam she shoots him sends butterflies fluttering over him once again. _How goddamn lucky can you get. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh, I can't believe that concludes my first fic. If you've read this far, I hope you enjoyed the experience, feel free to leave a kudos <3

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually my first fic ever so if you read this, uh thanks i guess. Leave a comment, that'd be cool :)


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